Japan's Softbank in talks to take over US carrier Sprint - report

One of Japan's largest mobile operators, Softbank, is said to be in talks to buy Sprint Nextel Corp, the third-largest cellular provider in the U.S.

Softbank reportedly seeks to purchase two-thirds of Sprint, giving it control of the company, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The details apparently come from two people familiar with the discussions.

Softbank may spend spend more than $19 billion, or 1.5 trillion yen, according to Japan's Nikkei newspaper, which did not say where it learned the price.

A potential deal is seen as an opportunity for Softbank to enter the U.S. market by buying out a compatible carrier. Both Softbank in Japan and Sprint in the U.S. use wireless equipment made by Ericsson AB of Sweden.

Sprint inked a deal with Apple last year to begin offering the iPhone to its customers. Reports indicated the company pledged to purchase 30.5 million total iPhones over a four-year span, a commitment of nearly $20 billion that was characterized as a move that "bet the company" on Apple.

Prior to offering the iPhone, Sprint saw a massive subscriber exodus to market leaders Verizon and AT&T. The company also originally bet on WiMAX technology for its high-speed 4G data, but has since begun the switch to LTE. Apple's latest iPhone 5 offers high-speed data over LTE and is not compatible with WiMAX.

In July, Sprint revealed that the iPhone played a major part in bringing new customers to the carrier. In all, 40 percent of iPhone sales in the June quarter were to new postpaid customers.

Seems like a good fit. Perhaps they'll even throw in a bid for T-Mobile! Not mentioned here are the latest bits of speculation that suggest Clearwire may also be part of a Sprint acquisition. At any rate, anything that gooses CLWR's share price is a welcome development in my book.

Hey, it's Japan. The country's built around ubiquitous data. The very thought of a cap is foreign to them (and good on them for that).

Here are Softbank's plans for people on the archipelago. I seriously doubt they'd offer anything BUT unlimited plans here if this went through.

Tethering to SEVEN GIGS, unlimited if you don't tether. It pains me to say this, but that's a pretty sweet deal. Pains because I shouldn't have to be saying that at all…

This must be new because they never had free tethering included before. That's why I never bothered to look at the new deals for the iPhone 5. I'll have to look into this as it is the only reason I JB. They used to screw you over and force you to buy a completely separate contract for your iPad. So you'd be paying two cell bills very month. I wonder what the point of putting a 7GB limit is. I don't think you're going to come close to that and if you do it wont be much over.

Still I don't want to upgrade to the iP5 because I prefer the iP4/4S. My iP4 still looks brand new nude and is only milliseconds slower than the iP5. I tried it out and wasn't that impressed. Definitely upgrade with the iP5S/iP6 though.